British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Sir Gerard Lowther, to the British Foreign

Office:

“[T]his new Freemasonry in Turkey, unlike that of England and America, is in great part secret
and political, and information on the subject is only obtainable in strict confidence, while those
who betray its political secrets seem to stand in fear of the hand of the Mafia. Some days ago a
local Mason who divulged the signs of the craft was actually threatened with being sent before
the court-martial, sitting in virtue of our state of siege.
...
[T]he Young Turkey movement in Paris was quite separate from and in great part in ignorance of 
the inner workings of that in Salonica. The latter town has a population of about 140,000, of 
whom 80,000 are Spanish Jews, and 20,000 of the sect of Sabetai [Z]evi or Crypto-Jews, who
externally profess Islamism. Many of the former have in the past acquired Italian nationality and
are Freemasons affiliated to Italian lodges. Nathan, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Rome, is high up
in Masonry, and the Jewish Premiers Luzzati and Sonnino, and other Jewish senators and
deputies, are also, it appears, Masons.
...
Emannuele Carasso, a Jewish Mason of Salonica, and now deputy for that town in the Ottoman
Chamber, founded there a lodge called „Macedonia Risorta‟ in connection with Italian
Freemasonry. He appears to have induced the Young Turks, officers and civilians, to adopt
Freemasonry with a view to exerting an impalpable Jewish influence over the new dispensation
in Turkey[.]
...
The inspiration of the movement in Salonica would seem to have been mainly Jewish[.]
...
Carasso began to play a big rôle, including his successful capture of the Balkan Committee, and
it was noticed that Jews of all colours, native and foreign, were enthusiastic supporters of the
new dispensation, till, as a Turk expressed it, every Hebrew seemed to become a potential spy of 
the occult Committee, and people began to remark that the movement was rather a Jewish than a
Turkish revolution. The Italian Government appointed a Jew and Mason called Primo Levi, who
was not in the consular career, as consul-general at Salonica, and Oscar Strauss, who, together
with Jacob Schiff, had influenced the American Jews in favour of Jewish immigration into
Mesopotamia as opposed to other Territorialist plans and as an extended form of Sionism, was
appointed American Ambassador here.
...
Carasso was one of the bearers of the message of deposition to Abdul Hamid, who was conveyed
to Salonica and confined in the house of the Italian Jewish bankers of the Committee, while a
brother of Remzi Bey was set over him as keeper. After the deposition the Jewish papers of 
Salonica sent up a loud cry of deliverance from „the oppressor of Israel‟ who had twice turned a
deaf ear to the appeals of Herzl, the Sionist leader, and who, by the imposition of the red
passport, like our own Aliens Act, against Polish Jewish immigrants, and otherwise, had
thwarted the realisation of the ideals of Sionism in Palestine. The ninth Sionist Congress in
December 1909 at Hamburg announced that the divisions in the Jewish world between
Territorialists and Sionists, „as a miracle of the Turkish revolution‟, had been healed. At the same
time Javid Bey, Deputy for Salonica, an exceedingly clever and gifted Crypto-Jew and
Freemason, was made Minister of Finance, while Talaat Bey, also a Freemason, became Minister
 of the Interior.
...
Parliament was „ordered‟ to pass a very stringent Press Law, and a Salonica Crypto-Jew and
Freemason was made „Directeur du Bureau de la Presse‟, a post of enormous power, as its holder 
can suppress a paper for severe „criticism of the new régime‟ (dubbed „reaction‟), or have the
proprietor or editor court-martialled. A semi-inspired Ottoman telegraph agency … was started
under the direction of a Baghdad Jew, and an all but successful attempt was made to appoint a
Salonica Jewish lawyer and Mason as adviser to the Ministry of Justice. The Constantinople
head branch of the Committee of Union and Progress is also run by a Salonica Crypto-Jew and
Mason. Another Salonica Crypto-Jew and Freemason made determined attempts to be appointed
„Préfet‟, i.e. Lord Mayor, of the capital, but has not yet succeeded in his aim, though Prince Said
Ha[lim] an Egyptian Freemason, has become Deputy Mayor.
...
[T]he old Ministry of Police was replaced by the „Sûreté Publique‟ controlling the police and
gendarmerie, and put in charge of a Salonica Freemason.
...
Talaat Bey, the Minister of the Interior, who is of Gipsy descent, and comes from Kirjali, in the
Adrianople district, and Javid Bey, the Minister of Finance, who is a Crypto-Jew, are the official
manifestations of the occult power of the Committee. They are the only members of the Cabinet
who really count, and are also the apex of Freemasonry in Turkey.
...
A Turk described it as a process of „drugging the latter with Jewish hashish‟. From the foregoing
or any close inspection of the Young Turkey movement in its present stage, it will appear to be
 principally Jewish and „Turkish‟ as opposed to other Ottoman elements, e.g. Arabs, Greeks,
Bulgarians, Armenians, etc.
...
It was hoped in the beginning that the Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks and the Ottoman Jew
would serve as economic props, but the Young Turk seems to have allied himself solely with the
Jew, Ottoman and foreign, and to have estranged the other races. The same result has been
witnessed in Hungary, where the Hungarian, who is of Turkish stock and is similarly devoid of 
real business instincts, has come under the almost exclusive economic and financial domination
of the Jew.
...
[A]s Turkey happens to contain the places sacred to Israel, it is but natural that the Jew should
strive to maintain a position of exclusive influence and utilize it for the furtherance of his ideals,
viz, the ultimate creation of an autonomous Jewish state in Palestine or Babylonia, as explained
 by Israel Zangwill in his article in the „Fortnightly Review‟ of April. He would kill two birds
with one stone if he could obtain from the Turk unrestricted immigration of Jews into Turkey, an
aim that he has been pursuing for years back, and transfer to Mesopotamia some millions of his
co-religionists in bondage in Russia and Roumania. In return for „unrestricted immigration‟ of 
foreign Jews, he has offered the Young Turk to sacrifice his mother-tongue and replace it by
Turkish, and even to take over the whole of the Turkish National Debt. Dr. Nazim, one of the
most influential members of the Salonica Committee and said to be of Jewish extraction, has, in
company, with his fidus Achates, a certain Faik Bey Toledo, a Crypto-Jew of Salonica, visited
the Paris branch of the I.C.A. (Judaeo-Colonisation Association) and has since openly advocated
importing 200,000 Roumanian Jews into Macedonia and some millions of Russian Jews into
in: E. Kedourie, “Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews”, Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 7,
Number 1 (January, 1971), pp. 89-104; reprinted: E. Kedourie, Arabic Political Memoirs and 
Other Studies, Chapter 16, Frank Cass, London (1974), pp. 243-263. For additional
correspondence to and from Lowther, see also: British Documents on the Origins of the War ,
1898-1914, 11 Volumes in 13, His Majesty‟s Stationary Office, London, (1927); and the
Hardinge Papers and the Grey Papers.